


Diana saves men from the water

by ClaraCivry (Kat_Of_Dresden)



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Justice League (2017), Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Angst, Drowning, Memories, basically she saves Barry and remembers Steve, some Diana/Steve feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-19 01:51:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11303268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_Of_Dresden/pseuds/ClaraCivry
Summary: Basically, the Justice League are fighting when Barry falls in the water and Diana has to rescue him. This leads to her remembering another man who she saved from the water, and how it changed everything.





	Diana saves men from the water

He was falling, not at his usual breakneck speed, but at something that would be fast for most people but seemed too slow for him. Something was wrong with Barry and Diana could see that there was no one around to help him as he plummeted into that icy lake, and there was a little splash. 

She waited five seconds, only five, before going to get him. Superman was trying to stop a plane full of people from crashing into the ground, Bruce was busy in some dialectical battle of one-liners with the villain and who knows where Aquaman and Cyborg were. The point was, they were not there and Barry was sinking further and further into the cold waters and she needed to get him back to into the land, back with the living. 

The cold water was invigorating, and as she looked for any sign the boy's red suit, she was for a moment taken back to another watery rescue. She was doing the rescuing, of course, and another man was the one in need of saving. Steve. The first time she even saw him he was sinking, trapped in that broken down plane and she took him away from danger and into the sandy shores of the beach. 

As she lay him down on the sand , she wondered where had he come from, how had he gotten there. Sure, she knew what men where, but she had never seen one in person. He looked... small. Much more harmless than she imagines, and much more... like them. She didn't know back then how much saving that man would change her life, knowing him for however brief a time. Meeting Steve changed her, and taught her many things about humanity and about herself. 

She discovered many things while with him, and in retrospect she was happy that her first contact with humanity was him, because he was brave, and principled and he gave her hope that things could go well, that there was light in the world and real heroes among them too. She lived one of her first great adventures with him, and it all had started there, at the beach, where she saved him. 

He'd been so wet and heavy in those clothes, but she'd been able to lift him out of the water easily. A stranger still, but not a stranger for long. She remembered that after some time unconscious he coughed and opened his eyes, eyes of an impossible blue, the colour of the sky in Themyscira, so full of life and wonder. Much like Barry's were.  
And now he was down there, in the water, and it was her job to save him. The memory of who Steve was represented everything she wanted to preserve and protect about humans, and she was not about to let someone die the way he almost did, specially not someone from her team, someone as special as The Flash. No, he would not be lost if she was there to remedy it. 

She got him to a place where she could lay him and she for herself how he was (and boy, had he been light to pick, Diana wouldn't have imagined that anybody could be so light and yet so powerful) and tried to get him to react, but nothing. There had been something wrong with him before he hit the water and she didn't know what, which meant she didn't know how to remedy it, how to fix her injured friend. 

Diana tried to resuscitate the boy manually, after realising that he wasn't breathing (and of course, lungs full of water weren't something that super healing speed could fix, that was a question of mechanics, the water needed to be out) and being extra careful not to break anything inside the boy's fragile chest, but nothing was working. He was getting paler and paler, the dark but lively eyes closed, the body still. 

Her mind kept going back to that beach on Themyscira, where she met Steve for the first time, but her thoughts were not anymore of fond remembrance, but far darker. What if, like with Steve, she was going to be able to save a man she cared about from the water, but was ultimately unable to save his life? For all her might, she hadn't been able to avoid Steve's untimely death (a fact that still hurt, and would probably still hurt forever) and there was a chance that she was going to lose someone she cared about again. 

These men she fought with were very complicated characters, and could be hard to work with some times, too dramatic at times, too convoluted, too cryptid and complicated in situations that were far simpler than they made them out to be. But Barry was full of light and enthusiasm and energy, and although he hadn't had the best of lives, he looked at everything with hope and happiness and was probably the one who smiled the most out of all of them. 

They couldn't lose him too, not to some mystery disease and some water. If Barry had to go, it needed to be many many many years into future in some epic battle where the world (all the worlds!) were saved by his speed and bravery. And then she thought back to Steve, and how he had died young because he'd been a hero. It was a loss that she could never forget, a loss that haunted her. 

She often wondered what if would have been like, if Steve had made it alive out of the war, if they had the chance to live together for years, with no war, nearly twenty years of peace, and them, together, fighting for the right causes, teaching each other about their respective worlds, about their lives, about their stories. Sharing memories and making memories. She had wanted all that and had lost it all - because Steve been taken too soon. 

But that would the only one, her only regret. She had rescued Barry from the water, and he was going to live, he was going to open his eyes and continue being an annoying shadow that you never know where may have gone. And she would be there, to rescue him again should he fall into the water again or got himself in too big a trouble. That was what she did, she fought for what she believed in, for all that was good in the world, and she rescued men from the water. 

It was when she was starting to lose hope that Barry's whole body spasmed, and his eyes opened wide, and he started coughing and retching water, his whole skinny frame suddenly springing into life. Diana let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding and looked at her team mate. His eyes weren't blue like a summer sky, and he didn't wow in surprise at seeing her, but Barry drew a small smile and said a small "thanks" in a hoarse voice. It was good to have him back, to see him again, alive and well. She helped him up and out of the thick of the battle, and supported him while he tried to get his breathing back to a normal pace, and tried to make his body obey him again. 

Maybe there were some wounds that would never close, some pain that would never leave her, but she wouldn't change having met Steve, even if it had been in a peculiar, wet way. The same way that she wouldn't change her speedster team mate, even if he too, could be a lot of trouble, a lot to handle. 

She was Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Queen Hyppolita of the Amazons, and she saved men who fell in the water. It was a thing she did. 

And something that had brought many good things into her life.

(Although she did tell Barry to be careful next time- there had been enough watery rescues)

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked! Thanks for reading!
> 
> Feedback breathes life into the author overtired lungs :) 
> 
> (is super appreciated)


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